Web Marketing - Paid Search Marketing

What is Paid Search Marketing or Pay-Per-Click Advertising?

Paid Search (aka Sponsored Search) refers to any form of advertising or marketing that involves payment that is directly or primarily associated with the results of an online search. The methods of payment can be various but are now typically Pay-Per-Click (PPC), although Cost-Per-Thousand Impressions (CPM) or Pay-Per-Action can be found. The latter are more commonly associated with more general, non-search, forms of online advertising like Banner Ads.

Paid Search is contrasted with Natural Search (aka Organic Search) which is influenced primarily be search relevance determined by software algorithms. While money can be spent on influencing natural search results, through knowledge of how algorithms typically work and search engine optimisation of a website, the latter kind of expenditure is indirect and non-specific to individual searches.

Google’s paid search product is Google AdWords, Yahoo’s product is Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft’s is MSN adCenter.

For more information refer to our dedicated Paid Search website.

Why Do You Need It?

Per-Per-Click (PPC) advertising programs may be an important component of a comprehensive search engine marketing strategy, and despite their cost, they can sometimes provide some very distinct advantages to marketers over the standard search engine optimisation and submission processes. For example, buying keywords linked to a Google Ad or Overture listing offers an immediate way for you to drive qualified traffic to your website and an extremely flexible way to support special-purpose advertising campaigns. In addition, with sophisticated tracking it is relatively easy to measure your ROI with this form of advertising.

These programs can be used to cover gaps in rankings when a site does not gain sufficient prominence on a particular keyword phrase because of limitations in content quality, quantity, site technological or low existing link popularity due to age of website or other factors. PPC programs also act to promote seasonal initiatives or new product launches or support offline advertising campaigns or opportunities.

The Clue Design Advantage

Clue Design can take away the headache of managing all of your company’s paid advertising campaigns. Our well researched keyword analysis and our highly disciplined tracking and measurement process allows us to ensure that you do not overspend your budget and receive a positive return on your investment (ROI).

With some very complex PPC schemes, including concepts like broad matching, phrase matching and exact matching, there are many traps for the inexperienced. These traps may cause some to pay for keywords not intended, pay a higher rate than needed or to produce relatively poor sales/enquiry conversion rates. With some competitors willing to bid high on keywords or throw big bucks at PPC, you need to have a smart manager in place. Clue Design currently manages campaigns as small as $300 per month or as large as $50,000 per month. We may be able to tailor a campaign to suit your business needs, so do not hesitate to contact our paid search specialist.

For more information refer to our dedicated Paid Search website.

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